After I got home from the Monday, 9 June 2014 meeting with Dr. Major, I immediately ordered from Amazon her two books, Qualitative Research: The essential guide to theory and practice and New Approaches to Qualitative Research. They arrived on my doorstep two days later.
I immediately started reading the first book, taking notes in my journal as I read along. When I studied and read about the Wheel of Research Choices, I understood more about the research lenses and about Pragmatism. This wheel helped me see why Dr. Major recommended that I consider Pragmatism, and the more I read about this particular research approach, the more I appreciated Dr. Major for understanding me so acutely what I wanted to pursue in my own dissertation.
Pragmatism, in short, is linking a theory to practice. Recalling Dr. Major's strong recommendation that I look for a theory, I need to find one soon to get a sense of structure of fitting the processes of my students' writing into the theory, to explore their perceptions on writing pedagogy as a student engagement tool.
As for the Qualitative Research: The essential guide to theory and practice book, I am loving it the more I read and take notes. This is a crucial must-have for every qualitative researcher. Because from what I have read so far, I feel better about the dissertation journey and how I can define my stance as a pragmatic qualitative researcher using the processes of my Orientation students' writing as the phenomena.